Saturday, October 4, 2008

Google Image Search Ads Showing to Some

Colin Colehour in the forum spotted a couple of image ads in Google image search. In previous times image search was ad-free, but Google had already announced they’re experimenting with ads there. I can’t reproduce these here from Germany, but Colin saw the following light-yellow box titled “Sponsored Links” in a search for canon camera:

Colin writes:

Here’s what I found out so far, you can trigger ads with generic search queries like ’shoes’ or ’software’. Ads can sometimes be triggered with product names. I couldn’t get a single company name to display an ad like ’Nissan’ or ’Microsoft’. I haven’t seen any Google Checkout icons next to any ads. Not sure if this is because its brand new or if they won’t do that with this kind of ad placement. I know for sure RitzCamera is a Google Checkout partner and none of their ads had the icon.

If you can bring up more ads in image search, screenshots and URLs (and your location) are welcome!